CIA Apparently 'Impersonated' Senate Staffers To Gain Access To Documents On Shared Drives
from the because-when-you're-already-in-the-torture-business,-what's-a-little-hac dept
The CIA is still fighting for creative control of its most anticipated 21st century work: the Torture Report. Long before it got involved in the ongoing redaction battle, it was spying on those putting the report together, namely Senators and Senate staffers. Hands were wrung, apologies were made and it was medically determined that Sen. Dianne Feinstein doesn't have an ironic bone in her body.
The Torture Report's final cut now seemingly lies in the hands of White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough -- a rather strange place for it to be considering the administration has no shortage of officials willing to offer their input on national security issues. But McDonough's ill-fitting position as go-between to the Senate and the CIA isn't the most interesting part of the story, although it appears he's trying to keep the "hanging" of CIA director John Brennan from being a foregone conclusion. Neither he nor the White House have suggested a replacement scapegoat, so Brennan may end up paying the price despite having the administration's full support. You can't just drop something as damaging as the Torture Report on the American public and simply walk away from it. A symbolic sacrifice still needs to be made, even if the underlying problems continue to be ignored.
No, the most interesting part of the latest Torture Report details almost falls off the end of the page over at The Huffington Post. It's more hints of CIA spying, ones that go a bit further than previously covered.
According to sources familiar with the CIA inspector general report that details the alleged abuses by agency officials, CIA agents impersonated Senate staffers in order to gain access to Senate communications and drafts of the Intelligence Committee investigation. These sources requested anonymity because the details of the agency's inspector general report remain classified.Impersonating staff to gain access to Senate Torture Report work material would be straight-up espionage. Before we get to the response that mitigates the severity of this allegation, let's look at what we do know.
"If people knew the details of what they actually did to hack into the Senate computers to go search for the torture document, jaws would drop. It's straight out of a movie," said one Senate source familiar with the document.
The CIA accessed the Senate's private network to (presumably) gain access to works-in-progress. This was denied (badly) by CIA director John Brennan. The CIA also claimed Senate staffers had improperly accessed classified documents and reported them to the DOJ, even though they knew the charges were false. Then, after Brennan told his agency to stop spying on the Senate, agents took it upon themselves to improperly access Senate email accounts. This is all gleaned from a few public statements and a one-page summary of an Inspector General's report -- the same unreleased report EPIC is currently suing the agency over.
Now, there's this: accusations that the CIA impersonated Senate staffers in hopes of accessing Torture Report documents. Certainly a believable accusation, considering the tactics it's deployed in the very recent past. This is being denied -- or, at least, talked around.
A person familiar with the events surrounding the dispute between the CIA and Intelligence Committee said the suggestion that the agency posed as staff to access drafts of the study is untrue.So, it was a just an innocuous firewall test. And according to this explanation, it wasn't done to examine the Senate's in-progress Torture Report. But this narrative meshes with previous accusations, including those detailed in the Inspector General's report.
“CIA simply attempted to determine if its side of the firewall could have been accessed through the Google search tool. CIA did not use administrator access to examine [Intelligence Committee] work product,” the source said.
Logging on to the shared drives with Senate credentials would allow agents to check the firewall for holes. But it also would allow them to see other Senate documents, presumably only accessible from that "side" of the firewall. While there's been no mention of "impersonation" up to this point, the first violation highlighted by the IG's report seems to be the most likely explanation of what happened here.
Five Agency employees, two attorneys and three information technology (IT) staff members, improperly accessed or caused access to the SSCI Majority staff shared drives on the RDINetAccessing another part of the shared network/drive by using someone else's credentials is low-level hackery, but not the first thing that springs to mind when someone says "impersonation." A supposed firewall test would be the perfect cover for sniffing around previously off-limits areas. Much of what has come to light about the agency's actions hints at low-level espionage. There's still more buried in the IG report that the agency is actively trying to keep from being made public. Just because these activities didn't specifically "target" Senate work material, it was all there and able to accessed. It doesn't really matter what the CIA says it was looking for. The fact that it was done at all, and done with such carefree audacity, is the problem. There are presumably ways to perform these checks that don't involve Inspector Generals, damning reports and multiple hacking accusations.
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Filed Under: cia, senate intelligence committee, spying, torture report
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Torture works and I would imagine that there were members of Congress briefed on their tactics and while not given approval, were not told to stop. Now Congress wants to go after them since the public found out about it? Shouldn't work that way.
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Not outside of Hollywood.
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Not outside of Hollywood.
Now that is just a lie! If you want information that someone somewhere wants to do something you don't like then you find some poor guy, torture him for 24 hours and he will tell you everything you want to hear.
Making someone tell you what you want to hear, that is the point of torture isnt it? I mean who cares about the truth, it just makes things way to complicated.
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I agree. They should have had the intelligence and humanity to know that torture is unethical, inhumane, and against the law, and they shouldn't have started doing so. It's also ineffective as others have mentioned, so there's that too.
All of this could have been avoided if the CIA/Bush administration/DOJ hadn't chosen to take the most morally corrupt route.
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I don't see it that way. That the Obama administration carried on with it, business as usual, is the current administration's "bad", yes.
However, the Bush II administration was fighting tooth and nail trying to ensure those they'd captured in The War On Terror, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, were not "Prisoners of War" as defined by the Geneva Convention (which outlaws torture). They were Extraordinary Rendition-ing them on secret CIA/DHS flights into allied prisons far away from accountability. Their staff lawyers were inventing specious reasons why water-boarding wasn't torture (which has since been !@#$% slapped right out of the park). The prisoners' Gitmo defence lawyers were interfered with big time.
As much as I disapprove of what's going on today, Obama didn't invent this cluster!@#$. This administration is certainly right in there in the thick of it as apologists and supporters of it, but they're not the only ones to blame here. The War On The Constitution has been going on for a lot longer than the present administration.
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But how is that worse than intentionally starting the evil in the first place? After all, the one who started it saw the absence of evil and decided to create it. The made more evil in the world than existed before them. Those who just let it continue aren't increasing the amount of evil, they're maintaining it.
So I disagree with you. I think the one who actively makes the world a worse place is worse than the one who fails to improve the world.
But we're talking about pretty minor differences here. Both presidents have failed us.
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Do you think anyone tortured today feels any better knowing that Obama didn't enact the current policy? Do they feel better knowing that he could stop it but doesn't because he doesn't want to face the political backlash? Do you feel better knowing these things? Is this what the pursuit of good looks like?
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For what definition of "works"? In that it makes people talk (and scream)? Yes. In that it makes them tell the truth? No.
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citation please
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Re: Torture Works
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That is not my point though. Congress (and the president) was aware of what the CIA was doing and didn't stop it. Now they want to throw the CIA under the bus?
You ok with that?
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I'm also not even startled that it all happened.
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In other words, using torture is an unambiguous act of terrorism.
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Indeed. We should use what "works" to get to the bottom of this. Waterboarding Brennan would be the first step. Waterboarding the "Five Agency employees, two attorneys and three information technology (IT) staff members" who were personally involved would be the next step. If we'd just permit Congress to use appropriate tools to question these people, we'd get to the bottom of it in no time.
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Well, we know for certain she does not have any backbone, ironic or not.
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Hi Tim, this is a great programmer joke. I laughed and laughed!
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Honest!
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attorneys?
It's curious that attorneys would be involved in testing firewalls.
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Congress knew and approved of what the CIA was doing, now wants to distance itself from it and throw the CIA under the bus.
You don't have a problem with that?
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This is simply wrong. That it's been done for centuries doesn't make it any more correct. There's a simple reason why it doesn't work: when you torture people, they will tell you exactly what they think you want to hear in an effort to make it stop, whether or not it's actually true.
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Worse than that, I'm afraid. Yeah, they knew, but then they did it to Feinstein's precious Oversight Committee, and that's stepping over the line!
Methinks the lady doth protest too late.
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You don't have a problem with that?"
I don't have a problem with that. If the people who work for the CIA are so devoid of ethics and morals that they're willing to engage in horrible crimes simply because congress approved of it, then fuck them. They deserve to be thrown under the bus. Maybe next time, they'll think differently.
Congress, of course, shouldn't get off the hook either. That's the real problem I have: that nothing is going to happen to those who knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it.
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Low-level?
> Much of what has come to light about the agency's actions hints at low-level espionage.
What do you mean by "low-level"? Generally, I use the term to mean "in the trenches"-level of detail and high-level to mean a broad understanding, i.e., something that fits on a powerpoint slide.
Second if low-level is meant to mean dumb, or sophomoric, then full, unauthorized access to someone else's computer isn't low-level.
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Low level hackery
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Let's charge him under that and then string up a whole list of other charges and offer a guilty plea deal where he goes to jail for the rest of his life.
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Given that torture incites the Muslim community to violence, which in turn puts US citizens everywhere in harms way, then should we expect Mike Rogers to now want to try to CIA for murder as well?
I mean, they're the same thing, right?
At least they should be in that twisted Mike Rogers world, right?
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So...
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Ahem.
I'm calling bullshit. Having designed, built, debugged, and managed firewalls since the days of FWTK, I smell fabricated BS designed to hoodwink a technically ignorant audience. NOBODY with even minimal competence would do this: they'd test before deployment and before handing out accounts. Moreover, they'd configure access in a default deny state: that is, whatever isn't explicitly permitted is blocked by default, be it Google search or anything else.
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Re: Ahem.
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Access Violation
If found guilty of all four charges leveled against her, Chen could face a maximum of 25 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine.
http://www.fbi.gov/cincinnati/press-releases/2014/noaa-national-weather-service-employee-indict ed-for-allegedly-downloading-restricted-government-files
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...nothing up my sleeve....
===========
But..... ISIS! ISIL!
We are at WAR!
We are at WAR with ISIS/ISIL!!!!
Releasing the Torture Report now would compromise that WAR effort!!
We must refrain from releasing the report in order to protect our Boys-On-The-Ground from any repercussions that the release of the Report might cause.
So there. Nya nya!!
War is the hat from which the rabbit comes. :)
---
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